Veronica
by MKproot
Summary: Nick, Greg, Hodges and Henry never seem to catch a break on their nights out... Post-Appendicitement
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: "CSI" and its characters/ideas belong to CBS. Any victims/killers are usually my creation.

"I'm heading out, Cath. Any paperwork you need me to do over the weekend?" Nick Stokes asks his supervisor, Catherine Willows as he leaves for the night.

"Nick, I want you to actually enjoy your three day weekend," Catherine scolds him playfully as she smiles at him from her desk.

"Thanks. Have a nice weekend,"

"You, too, Nicky,"

Nick walks to the parking garage happily, looking forward to his camping trip that he is going on this weekend. He is going camping with Greg, Hodges and Henry up north in one of the forests by the mountains, just to get away from all the stress that comes with their jobs. Nick just came off of another case involving a child, which in Nick's opinion are the worst to deal with.

That's not saying that he has favorite crimes to investigate. If it were up to him, there would be no need for a CSI or even a police officer. However, Nick understands that there is free will on this planet and it's the most dangerous toy that the human race plays with.

Nick turns the radio down as he approaches his subdivision. He is a very courteous neighbor; no speeding through the neighborhood, no cranking music so loud that the baby wakes up, no late night parties that keep everyone up and generally no problems at all. As a member of the law enforcement, it does bug Nick when other people do perform these rude actions, acting as if they are the only people who live in the neighborhood.

He sees the three cars of his friends parked outside his house and also the three men standing near Nick's door with their suitcases and conversing as they wait for Nick. They are all taking one car to save gas and time.

"Hodges, put that camera away," Henry groans as Hodges begins to record their conversation.

Hodges finally watched the cheap, so called "horror" film "The Blair Witch Project." Nick and Greg agreed that it was nothing more than a bunch of teenagers manifesting their surroundings based on a story they heard and instead of thinking of a logical way out of it, they fought with each other and yelled profanity a good percentage of the film. Henry was a little calmer with his review, but he agreed that it wasn't scary at all.

Hodges, however...

"Well, I just want to have this documented in case we do get lost in the woods and then that way whatever killed us all could at the least be heard on the camera," Hodges retorts.

"We're not gonna get lost and we ain't gonna get killed," Nick informs Hodges as he walks up to his friends with a smirk. "Don't think I'm going unarmed, boys,"

Nick opens his trunk to reveal his make-shift survival kit that consists of flashlights, a gun, rope, a small first aid kit, a back-up crime scene kit, water bottles, a thick blanket...basically anything Nick can fit into his trunk without taking up the whole space. He had packed his trunk last night, knowing how dangerous the forest can be at night. He had a gun the last time the boys went on an adventure and it saved all of their skins from getting shot at with a shotgun.

"Just try to stack your stuff in there," Nick tells them before he goes into his house to go to the bathroom and change into some fresh clothes. He kept his jeans on but stripped his button-up blue plaid shirt and exchanged it for a red t-shirt and a leather jacket.

"...we could always tie Hodges to the roof," Nick hears Henry say as he locks his front door.

"I think the roof would kick him off," Greg replies.

"Ha ha," Hodges mutters sarcastically. Nick chuckles and rearranges the suitcases so that they fit like pieces in a puzzle.

"Shotgun!" Greg exclaims after a short silence between the men, sustained by Greg and Henry snickering after teasing Hodges.

"Please tell me you're a hundred percent sure on where we're going this time, Greg," Henry comments as the group of four get in the car.

"I'm positive I know where we're going," Greg replies in a slightly sour tone.

"Take a left," Greg tells Nick about two hours later as they reach another four-way intersection.

"Right," Nick affirms.

"I said take a left,"

"Right,"

"I said left!"

"I know!"

"So why'd you say 'right?'"

"Because I was just confirming that I was taking a left,"

"Right,"

Nick turned the wheel and went right.

"I said go left!"

"But you just said 'right!'"

"Yeah, I was 'confirming'-"

Greg shut up as they approached a large forest that had a small parking lot near a faded trail that marked the entrance to the wooded area. Nick pulls in and smiles at Greg as he stops the car.

"Shut up," Greg chuckles and gets out of the car.

"Uh-oh..." Nick whispers as he turns off his vehicle. He just notices that he is out of gas. "Hey, does anybody happen to know how far away we are from a gas station?"

"About an hour away, I think," Henry yawns.

"How would you know, sleepy head?" Hodges remarks as the men begin taking their belongings out of the trunk. Henry had fallen asleep.

Hodges filled up about a third of his memory card in his camera.

"We'll figure it out later. We should try to set up camp so we can eat lunch," Nick says, taking charge of their situation as he normally does.

Nick slowly breathes in the forest air as he carries his luggage and equipment through the woods. Nick is very much an outdoor person. One of the reasons he got this job was to be on his feet. Sometimes he contemplates what life would have been like if he had stayed as a police officer. Then he'd _never_ get rest. As a CSI he at least gets to chill when evidence is being processed or while he waits for another case.

"Ouch! Watch that branch!"

"Oh, damnit! I dropped my bag,"

"Hodges! Watch where you're swinging that bag!"

"How much longer?"

"Where are we going?"

Through all of the questions, comments and complaints Nick grins as he looks ahead at a spacious spot in the woods. This grin twitches into a small frown, however, upon visualizing a crime scene in that same spot. He can see crime scene tape wrap around the trees, blocking any unidentified person to enter the scene. He can see the corpse of Sin City's latest victim, blood coating the wounds scarred into the victim's body...or strangulation marks...or no marks at all due to another cause of death that involves the body...or maybe it's a kidnapping and not a murder at all.

_Stop it, Stokes. You have an 'off' button, turn it on. This is a vacation, not a case. There is no crime scene ahead of us and it's likely there won't be over the course of this weekend. Let it go._ Nick thinks to himself as they finally reach their spot. Nick sets down his effects and then proceeds to obtain some of his trunk's survival kit. The walk to the trunk isn't a long one, not even ten minutes, so he won't bring all of its contents. He will, however, bring his gun, some flashlights and a first-aid kit.

He straps on the holster to his gun. He feels like he's on the job again with the flashlight in one hand and the grip of the handle to the first-aid kit in the other hand. The only thing missing is his kit and uniform...

_What are you doing, Nicky? Off button, remember?_

_Do I really have one?_


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Veronica is the only thing that belongs to me. CSI and anything else I reference belongs to their creators.

The moon rises through the trees as the sun sinks down into the ground. Stars materialize on the obscure, navy blue canvas infested by puffs of clouds. A cool breeze sweeps through the land, slightly ruffling Nick's dark brown hair as he bites down on his hot dog that he had cooked with the crackling campfire.

"Why do we always go out on a full moon?" Henry whines as he looks to the sky.

"Why are you so paranoid about full moons, Henry?" Hodges asks. "Last time wasn't so bad,"

"Yeah, all that happened was we got in a car crash, walked to a cannibalistic barbeque joint closed down due to a hepatitis outbreak caused by the late owner, and almost got shot by that crazy dude with a shotgun," Henry replies as he roasts his hot dog.

"Relax, Henry, what are the chances of that happening all over again?" Greg chuckles as he covers his hot dog in ketchup.

A loud thumping noise suddenly interrupts the men's dinner.

"Probably an animal," Nick shrugs off.

They heard a distant grunt followed by a continuous rustling of the debris carpeted ground. Nick immediately stands up, taking his gun out of its holster. He grabs his flashlight that was sitting in one of the cup holders in his chair. That noise was definitely not an animal.

"I'm gonna go check it out," Nick declares and begins walking into the forest, his flashlight lighting his path. He looks around for a dip in the forest floor. The continuous rustling sounded like something being rolled on the ground...or a body being dumped...

Nick strains his ears to hear any more sounds. If somebody did dump a body, they probably saw the fire from the campsite in the distance. He looks back and he can still see the fire, which is about the size of a basketball from where he is walking. He then realizes that he should keep looking forward and turns his head back around, but it's too late.

His body is propelled forward in an instant and Nick suddenly doesn't feel the ground before him. He lets out a yell as his body makes contact with various twigs and leaves on the ground and flips over and over again until he reaches a consistent level of ground. He is still holding his flashlight, but his gun fell out of his grasp. He immediately searches for the weapon. Nick hates the idea of being defenseless, even when he's in a secure area. He bought a gun many years back for protection at home, but now he always carries one wherever allowed or appropriate.

He spots his gun about three feet away. He crawls over to it with his stiff body, marred with cuts and bruises from the fall.

"Nick?" he can hear Greg shout.

"Over here!" Nick yells back through the constant stinging of his cuts. He notices that he skimmed by a couple of rocks that weren't exactly dull.

Nick pans his flashlight around the area he fell in. He seems to be in a ditch, random pieces of trash scattered throughout the trench. Teenagers never have the decency to throw their garbage where it belongs. Neither do killers. Next to Nick lies a fellow human being, or at least, what was a human being. The victim is a young woman in her early twenties. She has short, matted, dirty blonde hair and lifeless blue-tinted eyes. She has cuts all over her dirt infested body, mainly over her heart in the shape of an "x." The bloody skin around the incisions seems to flap open, like the hole that you put your straw in for your soda at a fast-food restaurant. Nick shines his flashlight into the hole, fighting off the urge to move a flap or two open to see better. However, he is not the coroner and doesn't want to contaminate any evidence until the scene has been called in.

He doesn't need to open the flaps anyway. The hole is filled with a puddle of slowly drying blood, indicating that this crime is fresh. Taking the human heart out of one's body is sure to yield a vast amount of blood. Nick knows that the primary crime scene will be a bloodbath compared to the scene he was forced into.

"Oh my God," Greg gasps when he comes up to the scene.

"We need to call this in, man," Nick tells him, trying to stand up. His body feels stiff and it hurts to move. He fell about seven feet, which isn't a lot, but it could have been worse. There is a small slope, but it's likely for anybody to fall in while climbing down.

"Only problem with that is we have no reception," Greg replies. "Hodges tried calling Catherine when we heard you fall and I heard him say he couldn't get reception,"

Greg climbs down, assisted by Nick as Hodges and Henry approach the scene.

"Whoa," the two lab rats say.

"Okay, well, I think we should look around," Nick suggests in a strained voice, noticing the blood trail leading from the other side of the ditch and beyond.

"But, the killer's still around, right?" Hodges remarks in a small voice.

Nick waves his gun at Hodges.

"Greg and I will go together. You two stay here with the body. The killer may get smart and realize that we might have discovered the body and might get rid of the evidence," Nick tells his comrades. He then helps Greg get up the other side of the ditch and the two follow the blood trail that increases to drag marks deeper into the sinister forest. Greg keeps his flashlight aimed at the drag marks while Nick keeps his gun and flashlight aimed in the direction that they're walking. Nick assigns the shadowy outline of what could be a cabin in the distance, about a football field away.

Nick motions for Greg to slow down and try to walk as quietly as possible. If the killer is in the cabin, Nick doesn't want him or Greg to become the next victim by alerting the killer of their presence. Nick looks down to where he is walking every half minute to make sure there is nothing he can trip or step on that would create a sound. His eyes dart continuously in all directions to make sure the killer isn't waiting for them behind a tree or something of that sort.

Nick keeps his main focus on the cabin, which is coming clearer in Nick's vision. Gil Grissom taught him never to assume anything, but Nick is assuming that the killer may be hiding in the desolate looking adobe. Nick can see dark red embedded on the floor of the porch of the cabin as well as the stairs. The trail Nick and Greg are following leads up to those same stairs.

"Stay here," Nick tells Greg as they reach the porch. Greg is unarmed and Nick doesn't want to risk him getting hurt in case the killer is indeed in the cabin. Nick slowly walks up the stairs, ducks under the left window and looks in as much as he can. He can see the bloodbath he had envisioned when he saw the victim, as well as a little extra blood. What if there are two bodies?

From what Nick can hear and see, it's safe to assume that nobody's in the cabin. Nick walks cautiously to the door and tries the doorknob. It's not locked. He looks back at Greg, who is hiding in the darkness behind a tree.

The door creaks open and in the center of Nick's vision is a small fireplace. Above the fireplace, a knife is stuck in the wood, blood oozing from the buried tip. Under the knife is a taunting note carved with said blood.

"Catch me if you can," Nick reads aloud, motioning for Greg to come forward. Greg enters with his flashlight shining on the contents of the fireplace, which is definitely not firewood.

A human arm lies across a human leg, which suddenly transform into bright orange flames as Nick directs his attention toward them. The flames enlarge instantly, but soon die down slowly. Nick can smell the scent of burning oil fuel the combustion.

Distant, giddy giggling suddenly echoes down the fireplace and also fades in from the roof. Nick hears something walking on the roof and then hears a thump on the forest floor. He immediately runs out with his gun and flashlight in separate hands.

"Las Vegas Police! Stop!" Nick yells as he chases after the human. He tries his best to keep his flashlight spotlighted at the running figure, realizing he has that advantage over him or her. Nick doesn't care what this person looks like or what gender they are; he just wants his developing questions answered.

The chase continues for about five minutes. To Nick, it seems like hours. Various branches that are poking out curiously from their homes attack him relentlessly, adding to the scratches that he already has that are in the running for an infection. Nick decides that he's had enough of chasing this white rabbit and decides to pounce on top of his prey, his body burning the waning adrenaline he got when the chase first began. The years are indeed beginning to take a toll on him. He feels like his adrenaline supply had been siphoned like gas in a car.

Both him and his prey land in a murky pond when Nick makes contact with the human. The cold water instantly refreshes Nick but then acts as a double-edged sword by bringing the chilling discomfort to Nick's skin.

The human, who seems to be a female, doesn't struggle as Nick wrangles her up out of the pond. She looks no older than twenty-one years old. She has dark brown hair streaked with neon green highlights. She has a piercing green glow in her shimmering eyes due to the flashlight's beam that Nick purposely shines onto the girl. She is wearing a black and white striped sweatshirt. The white strips have dark crimson red stains which cause Nick to assume immediately that she's the killer, along with her apathetic actions and sadistic smile. Her jeans are torn at the knee and her white sneakers are stained the same crimson red as her shirt.

"Who are you?" Nick asks gruffly as he tries to calculate a way to keep the potential killer at bay while also knowing where he is going.

"Name's Veronica. And you are...?" Veronica replies coolly as Nick begins to shove her forward. He keeps his gun pointed at her with one hand and has his flashlight in the other. He doesn't seem to need to restrain her just yet.

"Nick Stokes, CSI,"

"Oh, so you're not technically in the police department? Plus, you don't look like you're on duty right now anyway,"

"Shut up," Nick tells her, his heart and head pounding from all of the sudden action he's had to take part in.

They don't make much conversation as Nick escorts her back to camp. Nick begins to contemplate where he should hold his prisoner, knowing that he does not have a pair of handcuffs to bind her.

"Nick!" Greg's voice shouts from the darkness of the trees. Nick can see the blank eye of Greg's flashlight glare at him from the direction that Greg's voice came from.

"Yeah, it's me, Greg," Nick replies, still breathing rapidly from the exercise. He manages to slow his breathing down to a healthy level. Veronica didn't seem to have a problem cooling down.

Nick stops walking to allow Greg to catch up. He can see him come jogging toward Nick with the knife held in the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

"I've been wandering around a little and found a way to go around the ditch. It'll lead us right back to camp," Greg tells Nick as they begin walking again. They come up to the ditch and Nick suddenly questions why the trip back to the campsite is shorter than the trip he took to get too the cabin. Nick shines his flashlight into the ditch specifically on the young victim.

"Recognize her?" Nick asks Veronica.

"What do you think?" Veronica replies serenely.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Do not own CSI. Do not own Blair Witch Project. Do own Veronica. Enjoy.

"There's another body out there," Veronica goads to the four men who are huddled around a slowly building fire. "Then again, for all you know I could have been murdering another victim when y'all caught my attention,"

"Let it go, Nick," Greg protests as Nick stands up. The flames begin to rise as the assorted twigs and logs crack under the pressure.

"Yeah, Nick, come on, we can search more when we have more light and more people," Hodges yawns.

"Not good enough for me," Nick replies shortly and takes his gun back out. He walks up to Veronica wielding his flashlight.

"Where is the other body?" he asks, only inches away from her beaming face.

"By some trees. That's about all I can tell you, really. I don't know this forest any more than you do," Veronica replies calmly, not struggling against the rope holding her to the tree. She allowed herself to be padded down and allowed Nick's rope to be tightly wrapped around her body. She stood in silence as the men ate dinner, Nick keeping an eye on their prisoner the whole time.

"Nick," Henry calls out to Nick, who is beginning to walk away.

Nick turns around to see all three guys are standing up. Are they going to hold him back from going on this mission for truth?

"She could be playing a game, you know," Henry proposes.

"I know," Nick replies. "But it's going to drive me crazy all night if I don't know if she is or not,"

Or will it? Will it really drive him crazy? Is he just trying to be the hero? Maybe Nick just considers himself to be the big brother of the group and wants to make sure his little brothers are safe...

"I'm going with you," Greg suddenly shouts to Nick as Nick continues to walk.

"Me too," Hodges says, and Nick has a feeling it's only because he doesn't want to be left alone without protection with a deranged killer.

"Alright," Nick says, nodding to his companions. "Henry, stay here with _her_,"

The trio set out into the dark woods, the roaring fire shrinking in the distance as they reach the first body.

"We should have something to mark the location of these bodies," Nick comments as they go around the ditch.

"Well, by the time we get some daylight the stench will be a good marker..." Greg replies.

"If we ever see the bright, fresh, life-giving light of day again," Hodges laments as his camera locks onto the dead body while Hodges circles around it, not paying too much attention to where he is going.

"Hodges, why are you recording?" Nick asks, not stopping to wait for Hodges to come back into step with the trio.

"I'm documenting any possible evidence we may find in case they find our bod-"

Suddenly Hodges falls forward and the camera lands next to his head. Blood slowly drips from his nose as he sits back up, picking up both his camera and flashlight.

"Nick? Greg!" Hodges shouts, noticing that he is in another large ditch. The only sound that answers is not a voice of any kind. Only the sounds of the deadly Sin City night in a deadly Nevada forest...

Hodges flips the camera so that he is filming himself, but flips the viewer so he can also see himself.

"If anybody finds this tape, please return it to the Las Vegas Crime Lab. I-I just want to say I'm sorry to Nick's parents and-and Greg's parents and Henry's parents and my mom because-because we're going to die here. I-I just know it. We left a killer tied to a tree with just one person, a lab rat like myself and-and there's ditches everywhere! These ditches are like six feet deep and-"

"Hodges! Shut up!" Both Greg and Nick's voices suddenly yell. Hodges pulls the camera away from him and shines his flashlight at the source of the voices.

"You guys are still alive?"

"Hodges, knock it off with the cheesy horror movie crap! Now get up here, we think we found something!" Nick shouts.

Hodges stands up and finds that the ditch he fell in is only two feet deep. Nick and Greg are staring at something above them with their flashlights shining in their line of vision. Hodges jogs over to them and drops his camera before picking it up immediately to show the image that the boys have fallen witness to.

"What the hell is that?" Greg asks rhetorically.

"It's from 'The Blair Witch Project,'" Hodges says, staring at the hanging body with a look of discomfort that Nick has never seen in the lab technician before.

The torso of the dismembered body Nick had seen burning in the cabin lies in the middle of a strange symbol strung up between two trees. Nick also recognizes it from the movie.

"Ok, so now we're just missing a head," Nick comments, turning away from the torso.

"A severed head...Shouldn't be too hard to find, at least," Greg comments.

"You'd be surprised," Nick retorts dryly. He once worked a case where he had to find a severed head. It took him a good couple hours. Then again, the head had been decapitated by a train, not another human...

Nick looks back to the campsite and suddenly there is a loud yell followed by the fire disappearing from view.

"Henry!" Nick yells, taking out his gun as he begins to run back to the campsite, jumping over ditches that impede a smooth path back to the site.

Hodges and Greg follow suit as Nick slides down to Henry's fallen body.

"Henry! Henry, wake up!" Nick pleads. Henry seems to just be knocked out. It seems as if someone just punched him in the head. "Get him some water!"

"Nick..." Henry moans, beginning to come back to his senses slowly.

"It's okay, Henry, you're fine," Nick comforts him.

_Man, first sulfuric acid and now a possible concussion. Henry's luck is just as bad as mine._

"Ver-Veronica...She escaped...She has the kn-knife."


	4. Chapter 4

Author's note: This is the final part to the "Veronica" story. Well, not final techincally, because the character is continued in my other fan-fic "Controlled Chaos." I hope you all enjoy the final chapter!

* * *

The night is finally beginning to fade back into the slowly rising sun. Henry is doing better, though he claims that the forest is still spinning.

"I'm going to go to the main road and see if there's a cell phone tower or something. We need to call all of this in," Greg says, putting away the cell phone he had climbed a tree to try and get reception for.

"Be careful," Nick tells him and Greg leaves. "Hodges, you and I need to go look for Veronica. Henry-"

"Hold down the fort, got it," Henry interrupts, waving Nick and Hodges off. They begin on the path, avoiding both ditches and finally finding a trail. Nick thinks that it would be safer to stick to a trail and not as easy to get lost.

"Okay, we might have to split up," Nick realizes when the two reach a crossroad in the path they were walking on. He digs in his pocket and pulls out a pocket knife.

"Here, take this. I know it's less threatening than a gun, but it should still help," Nick tells him and then begins to head off in another direction.

Hodges stares at the knife in near disbelief.

"A knife. He has a fully loaded gun with 6 bullets and expects me to survive with a knife? Me, of all people? A knife?" Hodges says to himself as he begins on the other trail.

Nick's trail leads him to cross paths with the torso of the John Doe who Veronica has dismembered. The clean cuts severing the head, arms and legs from the body are flowing with blood that drips into a puddle on the ground.

Why take his body apart? Nick's seen killers do pretty crazy things, but they normally have a reason (or it was just sheer stupidity on the killer's behalf.) But Veronica seems like she's a psychopath, incapable of feeling anything but the pleasure from the crimes...

Nick keeps walking and finds another campsite, potentially one that the victims inhabited. He notices the empty beer bottles and cans as well as the dead campfire. He can smell the stench of urine in the middle of the pit.

There is a large tent, big enough for three or four people. He opens the door to the tent and sees an air mattress with distinct slashes in a sheet of blood. He also sees the head of the victim on the mattress. The head's eyes are wide open as is the mouth. How could Veronica restrain this poor kid and chop him to pieces?

Nick visualizes the kid's body-intact-sleeping on the air mattress. Veronica comes in and slices his head off instantly and without hesitation. She then proceeds to chop off other limbs of his body, cutting the air mattress in the process and causing it to deflate.

_So, what, the girl comes back from taking a piss or something to see her dead boyfriend and then be chased by his killer? Something still feels off..._

Nicks thoughts on how all of this could have potentially happened are suddenly interrupted by a loud scream.

_Damnit, Hodges! You better not have fallen into another hole again!_

Nick runs toward the source of the scream, but looses his sense of direction as he runs through the forest. He hears another cry for help and finds that it's coming from the cabin where he had found the severed arms and legs.

"Dave?" Nick whispers in a low tone, gun going in first through the door. Nick finds the camera on the floor and finds Hodges standing in the corner, turned away from Nick.

"Hodges?" Nick whispers again, slowly moving toward his friend. He taps Hodges on the shoulder and Hodges doesn't move. Nick twists Hodges around and Nick notices that his pocket knife is in his shirt pocket, which is now infected with blood.

"Oh my God, Hodges!" Nick yells and puts his friend on the floor. He takes out the knife and some blood spurts out. "Shit!"

Nick takes his friend's pulse and finds that he's still breathing. He puts pressure on the wound and Hodges' head suddenly rolls to the side.

"HENRY!" Nick shouts at the top of his lungs. "HENRY!"

Nick fires a shot into the air.

"Jesus Christ is my savior, Nick! You didn't have to shoot your gun!" Hodges suddenly says, pulling his hands to his ears.

Nick jumps back and Hodges begins to laugh.

"What the fu-Hodges, that wasn't funny!" Nick shouts, realizing the "blood" was just ketchup. "What if Veronica heard-"

Hodges attempts to stand up, but Nick pushes him back down with his foot. He then puts the knife back into the small hole Hodges had punctured in his pocket, but he inserts the knife a little deeper...

* * *

"Nick, that gunshot-?" Henry asks as Nick nearly dives into the tent and begins to dig through a bag.

"Shut up, Henry!" Nick shouts and he holds the gun to Henry's head.

"Nick, wh-what are you doing?" Henry cries as he holds up his hands in surrender. Nick doesn't seem to be kidding.

"We're going to take a walk," Nick tells him as he ties Henry's hands behind his back. He grabs Henry's shoulder and takes him to the cabin, kicking open the door as he shoves Henry in. Hodges' fallen flashlight is aiming directly at the man himself, or at least his head.

"Oh my God!" Henry shouts, and tears begin to form in his eyes.

"Get in the corner!" Nick commands. "Turn around! If I see those eyes looking anywhere but the wall I will cut them out nice and slow, got it?"

Henry nods as he does what Nick requested.

"Listen, Nick, if-if this is about letting Veronica escape-"

"Shut up!" Nick tells him for the second time. Henry hears his gun cock back. "I'm sick of having to look after you! I should have let Slick shoot you back at the Hog Hideout!"

Suddenly there's a clapping noise.

"Nicely played, Nick, but you're not actually going to kill him, are you?" Veronica's voice says, lighting up the room with her brutal calmness. "Not with a gun. It's not as pleasurable, is it? They say a sword is an extension of the arm, of yourself...but the knife is only a mini-sword, right? Guns don't kill people...Go on, kill him with the knife...You know you want to,"

Silence follows Veronica's little speech to Nick, and Henry takes deep, shuddering breaths.

"Now, Hodges!"

_What the hell?_ Henry thinks to himself as he turns around. Veronica is pinned down by Hodges and Nick. She struggles against them as they stand her up and put her arms behind her back once again.

"Tie her up, Henry!" Nick orders.

"What?"

"The rope isn't tight at all, just take it off and do it!" Nick shouts to him. Henry tries to untie himself and is surprised to see that he can do it. He immediately helps Hodges tie Veronica's hands as Nick holds her at gunpoint yet again.

"Well played, Stokes," Veronica tells him, reacting as if there were no gun in front of her face at all. Sirens begin to whoop in the distance as the sun begins to rise higher and higher.

"Game over," Nick replies. Hodges and Henry grab her arms and begin to "escort" her back to camp, where Greg is talking to a uniformed officer about what happened. As Nick fills the rest of the story in, another officer handcuffs Veronica for real this time and takes her to a police car.

"We got your kits, sir," Officer Clark says as he returns to the campsite. "CSI Willows asked us to bring them to you. CSI Langston is on his way,"

"Thanks, Clark," Nick says, taking his kit. Greg begins to walk over to the first body.

"Sorry your vacation got ruined, sir," Clark tells Nick as they begin to walk to the other victim's spread out body. Hodges and Henry assist the officer in marking a perimeter.

"I have to admit, it was kinda fun," Nick replies, smirking. The smirk fades when a voice comes in on Clark's radio.

"Veronica has escaped, I repeat, Veronica has escaped,"


End file.
